This Pizza Was Made with 101 Cheeses

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Some people obsess about pizza crust. (Thin or thick? Discuss!) Others think deep-dish thoughts about the sauce. And, of course, toppings are their own separate category of debate.

But pizza fans who are all about the cheese will be intrigued to contemplate this: a pizza made with no fewer than 101 different cheeses.

Whoa.

A Portland, Oregon, pizza joint, Scottie’s Pizza Parlor, took it upon itself to mark Portland Pizza Week, which took place in late April, by making a 100-cheese pizza, but then the eatery opted to add an additional “distinct” cheese in a stuffed crust, ramping the cheese count up to 101.

“A pizza topped with this number of distinct cheeses has never been attempted before in the history of the world,” Scottie’s
boasted on its website. The Brooklyn-born owner, Scottie Rivera, is hoping to earn the official title for “Most Cheeses on a Pizza” from the Guinness World Records for his Centuono Formaggio, which was inspired by the Novantanove Formaggio (99-cheese) pizza from the 2014 film, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” wherein it was dubbed a “
culinary impossibility.”

It turns out such a cheesy aspiration is quite possible, in fact, if you set your mind to it.

Rivera worked with a local cheese purveyor, Greg Hessel of
Cowbell Cheesemonger, to procure the necessary number of cheeses and then worked to calibrate the mix so that every bite was “a little adventure," but didn’t end up being too “funky,” he
told the Oregonian.

He ended up with two blends: a shredded blend of 55 cheeses and a soft-cheese blend made up of house-made ricotta and 36 other varieties. Then Rivera and his team sprinkled a blend of nine grated dry cheeses over it all and topped it all off with a “
frico crisp of baked parmiggiano reggiano” on each slice. Those cheeses plus the aged-part-skim-mozzarella-stuffed crust clocks in at 101.

The pie was available for one day only — Sunday, April 23 — and customers were limited to two slices per person or a minimum of four people present for a whole pie. But at $2 per slice and $16 for a whole pie, well, that’s a pretty big bargain for a piece of pizza history.

Rivera aimed for a pizza that, at first bite, tasted more or less like a regular cheese pizza, but then became more nuanced as you chewed and mulled. “There’s things going on; it’s almost hard to place,” he
told Fox News.

A Reddit commenter posting under the name “Mr_Stever”
said he had tried slices from two separate pies and “tasted different nuances and notes of cheese with every bite (with the lemon ricotta and that parmesan crispie tying the two together).” Although his palate was probably not “sensitive enough to identify and name each of the 100 cheeses that crossed it,” Mr_Stever said, he had found the pizza “incredibly delicious,” every mouthful a “journey through the sacred lands of cheesedom.”

Sounds like there are 101 reasons to wish we’d been there to try it ourselves.

I frequently see commercials for this pizza chain but often wonder if there really is anything I can order that won’t bust my waistline? We’ll give you the cheesy facts so you’ll be prepared on your next visit.